"Same happen with the Poser 11 Bondware version it never got finished ending up with a large corruption of options and the Python Kill due the version number change witch only works with a Fix provided , that one has to be searched in the forums to make older Products working with integrated Python scripts."

I use AVFix. Everything works fine, I use a LOT of scripts for content creation type stuff. The patch is dead simple. I came to 11 pro from Poser 8. I'm not seeing what's been broken at all. I'm seeing only vast improvements and quality of life additions for getting creation tasks done with Poser.

Look, can we get over the Python thing already, please? The previous version reached its end of life, they had to move over. Remember PoserPro2014? Same stuff happened when Python versions changed and a bunch of scripts stopped working, and some creators updated and some disappeared and their products bought here in the marketplace became unusable, and absolutely no amount of complaining made it go away. It's the way of life in software development--Python and Poser aren't the only ones. So let's stop the negativity and focus on the original question.

Boni asked a valid question, and it looks like at least from here that Firefly shaders are still vastly preferred based on the sample here. A few of us suggested a survey outside of the forums to reach more users, perhaps via an email blast from Rendo to their subscribed newsletter users: that's a decent sample size. Since this would be for their vendors, it may be a valid option, I don't know, I'm not a vendor, I just have fun making images I'm not making a single cent from.

I think we may need more people chime in here without devolving into Rendo bashing or Superfly bashing, because we have enough of that here already.

Where do you get off ordering people around like a bossy mean librarian Rhia? Really.

All my scripts work fine. I don't bash Superfly. People can have their opinions without you jumping down their throat. You do it constantly. It's tedious and boring.

Sorry sir. I thought you and I were talking about the same thing. Apparently not. I'm trying to be polite and get back on track from pointless misinformation that keeps appearing here over and over again and no, again, I'm not talking about you.

Apology accepted. I apologize for getting agitated. I get stressed if I start to detect blood in the water. So far cyogreem has been reasonably civil in my opinion. He does have a sort of on the edge of doom for Poser attitude. What can you do?

primorge posted at 9:31PM Sat, 04 September 2021 - #4426567

I think with many low quality efforts done with Superfly there is a certain advantage, there's so much grain that there's no need for bump maps lol.

I'm pleading guilty. Well, half guilty. Back in the day, I always added a little bit of artificial grain to my renders in Gimp to make them look less plasticky, now I just dial the sample count down a bit. Still using bump maps, though.

My data point, if anyone cares: came back to the Poser world after a decade, jumped right onto P12 and SuperFly, found it ridiculously easy to make a skin material with the PBSDF node that reacts to light in an absolutely lovely way, and don't see myself ever going back to FireFly.

ETA: That said, I tend to prefer making my own content these days, so my data point may not be worth all that much.

I use Firefly because I'm used to it, I can get decent results and I more or less know what I'm doing with it. Superfly... oh, boy. I hardly know where to start, renders take forever, I have to faff about to get something halfway useful and I'm constantly floundering in the dark. Oh, and Displacement doesn't work unless you subdivide the fuck out of everything.

No thanks, life is too short.

I use Superfly almost exclusively ever since it was introduced in Poser.

Me too. I wrote Firefly shaders and did tutorials on making them over at PFD for years and had no intention of buying the new Poser when Smith Micro bought the product. The site bought me the software so I could see what Superfly was and help the site users if possible. I read the Cycles Shader Encyclopedia in about 20 minutes and never looked back. I haven't used a Firefly shader since. As a trained photog Poser has always been the bomb. The lights and cameras are based on real world cameras and standard studio lights. PBR rendering such as Superfly provides allows for superb shots and lighting effects because you know exactly what you are going to get.

As for V4 and her skin. It doesn't look right, out of the box; no matter what render engine you use. First "trick" you needed in Firefly was to get rid of the blue tint in the maps. SSS in Firefly still doesn't function correctly and never did. Firefly does have micro-poly displacement. That is a big deal. Allows for lighter polycount but you are going to have a hard time convincing me that shader tricks with Firefly are faster and easier than Superfly/Cycles.

Victoria 4 did render nicely "out of the box" at one point. I think Poser 9 was when it changed. When SSS was added.

A lot of older characters in the RMP also have a greenish tinge that is very unattractive. I recently came across some old MAT files I made for Poser 5, and they look horrible now. And every once awhile, a newbie shows up wondering why the characters that looked fine in Poser 8 or lower look terrible now that they've upgraded.

You need to revamp the old shaders and techniques to the Superfly environment or else you will have horrible results. I have been creating my own shader node networks for old content, generating new maps, and working out the problems with lighting and rendering. Firefly, for me, is becoming a faded memory.

I still struggle with blue tinges from SSS with mesh intersections or very close proximity mesh positions in Firefly, even a very thoughtful usage of scatter groups can't remedy it in certain material areas. I don't render with really heavy scattering on skin, usually a scatter scale of 1.8 or thereabouts, to offset this. Even BB's Max Scatter trick isn't really practical with certain set ups.

I imagine that regardless of what renderer you are using, there is a certain element of artistic eye and "talent" involved. Most people seem to like Erogenesis' Poser imagery very much (I think he overdoes it with the oily specular but that's opinion) and he uses Firefly exclusively.

I think Superfly is especially suited to architectural stuff and vehicles etc. Caustics effects etc. Shadows also seem more delicate. Cloth looks really good. I'm just not seeing a gigantic difference with skin at this point, at least not enough where it isn't a Mountain Molehill situation.

SamTherapy posted at 9:11AM Sun, 05 September 2021 - #4426680

No thanks, life is too short.

There is that also. If you spend a lot of time modeling or painting or morphing and working through all those technical aspects and you have material/lighting setups that work well for your work you don't necessarily feel like starting from square one again to get things looking right. Especially when your workflow has evolved in such a way over years of work. Back when I was doing traditional media Painting and Sculpture I'd take my work to a professional photographer to have my slides made. The photography bit was a necessary evil. Conversely as this type of art work doesn't "exist" in a real 3 dimensional space the afterthought of photographing it becomes a focus. If you're spending a lot of time making the stuff it can be a very taxing step.

There's the dichotomy of whether you are looking at your art works from the perspective of "this is photography" or "this is Painting/Drawing" or even simply "look at my sculpture, see this wireframe and how everything is made?" There's this absolutist attitude here sometimes that can't seem to reconcile itself in terms of art notions that other art fields figured out a looooong time ago. It's a very confusing topic that doesn't seem anywhere near being resolved. It would interesting if there were a photography department for promos that specialized in photographing people's work to it's best advantage with input from the original creator. Sounds like a crazy idea and probably not cost effective but it's how it's done often times in other art commerce situations.

primorge posted at 2:06PM Sun, 05 September 2021 - #4426706

I think Superfly is especially suited to architectural stuff and vehicles etc.

I think you are dead wrong about that. Maybe this picture will convince you otherwise:

Cycles, image size 800x1200 pixels, CPU rendered with Ryzen 6 cores, 12 threads; render time: not quite 10 minutes; lighting: HDRI, no additional light; textures: 4K.

I wear my sunglasses at night

:D

That is a very nice image though. I'll confess I don't look often in the galleries. What was that I said earlier about talent? I wonder who's figure that is, it helps a lot. Is that Poser?

Firefly...

Just kidding, mechanical pencil on 8 X 11sketch paper ;)

It is a nice render, but to me, the straps and glasses look a lot more realistic than the skin. Hair, IMVHO, doesn't look real at all. The skin on the neck looks a bit odd. Like there's no texture, starting halfway down the neck.

I actually don't mind that super-smooth look, but it it doesn't match the skin on her face.

That's one reason I like NPR (or just running renders through Photoshop). It's a way to even out the hyperreal vs. not-so-realistic parts of a render.

It's probably a Blender image. ADP is fond of coming into Poser threads and showing images from Blender. I may be wrong though. Knowing my luck with forum interactions I probably am lol.

It gets to the point really that why bother, in my opinion, just Google smiling pilot woman and use that image. There's probably a million that look just as much like a photograph. Other than technical show off stuff what's the image saying as a work of art?

But I bow out of the discussion, I don't really have an interest in this back and forth.

He did say it was Cycles. But that's what Superfly is aspiring to, isn't it?

It is. Apparently not as advanced of an implementation though. It's wedged in I guess you could say. Or rather, I've heard ADP state.

In 20 years all this will seem ridiculous really. Can't imagine what people will be debating or preferring then. Pretty good chance I won't be around to see it unfortunately.

In 20 years, people will be using Poser or similar software on their phones. :-)

Seriously, I hope Bondware doesn't spend all their time implementing better and better versions of Cycles. That seems like it would be a nightmare for vendors, and a pain for users, too. I'd like to see some improvements in other areas. Like the Hair Room. Can something like Dforce hair be made to work in Poser? Heck, I'd be happy if the Hair Room worked like it's supposed to.

Though I really would love more NPR options. I've been playing with the software formerly known as Manga Studio, and it has some comic/illustrative options. Maybe too many. I'd buy a pack of "recipes" to get certain looks.

I have manga studio, won a copy of it years ago. Never installed it. It's the go to for a lot of artists interested in illustration and comics from my understanding. I have too many bells and whistles with the softwares I use already. If anything we're spoiled for options as artists. It might be a detriment to personal innovation. For now Firefly is good enough for my personal things, if I want to try and sell something I'll use Superfly too. I'm thinking either just using EZSkin formula or Physical surface. Physical surface seems the most interesting and immediate. Lights seem to be much more simplified in Superfly also, with area lights and soft shadows. I've collected enough screencaps of people's render settings preferences to last me for quite a while lol.

It's funny you don't use Superfly Randym77, I recall in many threads when Superfly was first introduced you used to post some nice renders using it.

Without glasses ;)

This is work in progress. And yes, the body texture has no detailed bump and roughness map until I get better. I'm sick since a week now.

Very well done. I won't be critical of anything I see. I am curious what the model is though.

Is that rendertime DOF or post?

Since you are clearly aiming for photorealism I will say the crisscrossing roughness/bump is scaled badly or needs tweaking. It's immediately noticeable.

Waiting for twiztidkidd to make her chomping on a cigar. Challenge issued lol.

primorge posted at 4:33PM Sun, 05 September 2021 - #4426742

It's funny you don't use Superfly Randym77, I recall in many threads when Superfly was first introduced you used to post some nice renders using it.

I did? I don't remember that. I remember being endlessly frustrated, trying to get hair to look decent. Especially dynamic hair. I did give it a try, though.

Clip Studio (what Manga Studio is now called) has some Poser-like options now. At least some versions do; there are a gazillion different versions now. You can import 3D models, pose them, add materials, add a background, and render them. I remember it being a strictly 2D thing when I first bought it from Smith Micro.

I have fanciful notions that the real reason SM dumped Poser is because of all the lovely community baggage it comes with, Rendo was uniquely positioned and well used to all that. (JOKING)

Primorge, please watch the nudity tag.

Apologies RedPhantom, you can remove those images if you like. It was just a humorous moment in reaction to Twiztidkidd's image manipulations.

primorge posted at 5:35PM Sun, 05 September 2021 - #4426746

Since you are clearly aiming for photorealism I will say the crisscrossing roughness/bump is scaled badly or needs tweaking. It's immediately noticeable.

No postwork. Means: real DOF. The model is a G8 with a heavily sculpted Head. But will be replaced by "Bella". Because the figure is fully dressed, the figure is easy to exchange - she is actually just a clothes rack. And I have better teeth for Bella then for G8 :)

The textures are all made out of layers – and yes, there is a roughness layer that shouldn't be there ...

Waiting for twiztidkidd to make her chomping on a cigar. Challenge issued lol.

He is really good with Photoshop!

primorge posted at 5:47PM Sun, 05 September 2021 - #4426750

Apologies RedPhantom, you can remove those images if you like. It was just a humorous moment in reaction to Twiztidkidd's image manipulations.

Why would I want to remove them? They are great images. I just was reminding you to add tags as needed.

"He is really good with Photoshop!"

He's obviously using some deepfake software, nobody could so flawlessly repaint like that in photoshop in a half hour. Or I'll eat my hat. (looks over nervously at hat)

primorge posted at 6:26PM Sun, 05 September 2021 - #4426754

"He is really good with Photoshop!"

He's obviously using some deepfake software, nobody could so flawlessly repaint like that in photoshop in a half hour. Or I'll eat my hat. (looks over nervously at hat)

O yes. The term "Photoshop" is nowadays rather a synonym for faked pictures.

Were those images above made with Poser? Are those figures shown useable in Poser? Sorry, just trying to get this back on topic; great images, though!

Boni's probably got her hands on her hips and she's tapping her foot...

...and she's slowly reaching for a frying pan LOL! No more pics after this... back to the topic, please.

Rhia474 posted at 7:00PM Sun, 05 September 2021 - #4426759

Were those images above made with Poser? Are those figures shown useable in Poser? Sorry, just trying to get this back on topic; great images, though!

It's Genesis in Blender (the Blender bit is an informed guess).

Yep, thank you.

And I'm seeing telltale signs all over the place in twiztidkidd's images now...

There's no detectable clone stamping traces that I can see. It's being done via an algorithm...

I saw this thread when it was in the first page, came back here now and was thoroughly confused.

Had to roll back a few pages to understand what was going on. Wow, this was a wild ride. xD

I'd say I would render some things in Firefly and in Superfly to compare so we could get back into topic, but honestly it would be unfair - I haven't touched Firefly in years and have completely forgotten how to make anything look remotedly good in that. I can only say that, for my purposes, making things look good in Superfly is waaay easier, and everything renders faster on GPU so I'm not going back.

All in all, it's good that each person gets to choose though. Even though sometimes I curse the heavens that I have to supply materials for both in my products, LMAO

@AO

You mentioned previously that you use Physical Surface for your character work (I only have some of the clothing you've made), And there's that thread where BB was instructing you on how to use it, particularly the scatter controls and maps. Fair to say that it's a good Superfly skin solution?

I see that with Superfly there's still issues with glowing mesh intersections. And I see that Superfly uses scatter groups. Blueish tinting still a problem in Superfly? I know that Superfly got rid of most of the self shadowing polygon and IDL splotches problems inherent in Firefly.

The glowing mesh intersections was fixed by adding a scatter id. I don't know of a blueish look, but that might be how my monitor displays.